| Issue #1 - March 30, 2007 |
Vacation
We Were Promised a View of Lake Louise. So Where Is It?
By Dan Rattiner
My whole life, I have looked forward to visiting Lake Louise in Canada. It is one of the great wonders of the world. Three mountains rise straight up for more than a mile on two of the sides. The third side is fenced in by the edge of a mile-high glacier. On the fourth side is the hotel you look at it from. What a sight it is. It is often seen in picture books of the world’s great places — the pyramids, Mt. Everest, Victoria Falls and Lake Louise. Because of its great depth, it appears in photographs as an absolutely still piece of blue-green glass, surrounded by these snowcapped walls of granite. It is serene and almost magical. This past March, we decided, Chris and I, to go see it for ourselves. We would take three weeks and tour the entire Pacific Northwest — Seattle, the Olympic Peninsula, Vancouver Island and Vancouver, and then, to get to Lake Louise, take the classic rail trip on a sightseeing train from Vancouver through the Canadian Rockies to Jasper, which is almost exactly on top of the continental divide, just two hours drive from the Lake.
And so that is what we did.
Today, I am sitting at the window of our room on the fifth floor of a luxurious hotel called the Fairmont Château Lake Louise, looking out at a group of about two dozen chefs, walking in their white caps and aprons as a group across a snowy parking lot from one of the buildings here toward a side entrance of the main building. They are among the 40 or so chefs who work in the various restaurants in this enormous, and very gorgeous, hundred-year-old hotel and they have just had, apparently, a chef meeting. Beyond them is the destination of this entire month’s journey, the Lake, and beyond that are the mountains and the glacier.
I have, however, just come through a very traumatic experience.
The sightseeing train trip was exactly as I thought it would be. We could sit in a sightseeing car and look out at the spectacular scenery of the snowcapped mountains and snow covered valleys through windows not only along the side of the railroad car, but in the roof of it, too. We roared across narrow bridges that passed above deep granite canyons, we glided through mountain passes with the mountains rising up to the sky, we passed alongside frozen waterfalls, we stopped at tiny stations in little tiny mountain towns blanketed with snow.
We had our own compartment with club chairs and a foldout bed. We ate in a dining car attended by porters. We played cards in a special living room car. We met fellow travelers. And all the while, the Canadian Rockies, which might be compared to the journey through the Adirondacks in upstate New York, but on steroids, passed by. We boarded the train at five p.m. in Vancouver, and disembarked at eleven a.m. the next day in Jasper.
From Jasper, we went by Sundog Tours down the Glacier Highway for the two and a half hours through more snow-covered, 12,000-foot-tall mountains to Banff. In Banff, we rented a car and drove another half hour up the long driveway and through the forests to the port au chere entryway of the Fairmont Château Lake Louise, where uniformed porters helped us out of the car, took our luggage and steered us inside to a grand reception area while valets drove off to park our car.
I didn’t know this at the time, but this vast 100-year-old hotel, which looks much like Buckingham Palace, has had many wings added on to it. Later on, when we were given a plan of the place, it could be seen that it was in the shape of the letter J, with, across the top another wing that was in a sort of Y. It was utterly gorgeous, but until you got used to it, it would be pretty easy to get lost. Or pretty confusing as to what you might be looking out on.
We approached the reception desk. A woman in a uniform was checking in a couple at one end of it. At the other end of it, a handsome young Asian man motioned for us to come over.
“May I help you?” he smiled. We went over.
“Ah yes,” he said. He looked at a computer screen set just in front of him on the other side of the desk. “Mr. Lattiner. We have a Rakefront room for you.”
As he continued to speak, politely and carefully, it became apparent that he was confusing his “L”s with his “R”s. It is something that happens early on when a man or woman from a certain part of Asia first learns English. This man was in that category. But I quickly began to translate his speech, correcting it in my mind and getting as comfortable with it as, I suppose, the executives at the hotel must have when they hired him. He was otherwise a perfectly mannered deskman. I salute him. Now.
We went up to our room. I was irritable. The room was beautiful and there was a big window. So I opened the curtains. No Lake Louise. What was out there were some pine trees, a large, flat snow-covered place that might have been a field and then various mountains and glaciers all around. It was a nice view, but it wasn’t Lake Louise. What it WAS, was a view looking out over the hotel awning we had driven under.
“We’re supposed to be Lakefront. This isn’t Lakefront. I think they’ve got us on the wrong side of the hotel,” I said to Chris.
“It’s fine,” said Chris, looking out.
“No it’s not. Look out there.”
She looked. She didn’t say anything.
The porters arrived with our bags, and set them up for us on stands and in closets. They left.
“I’m calling the front desk,” I said, picking up the phone.
“It’s FINE,” Chris said.
“Herro, Front Desk.”
“Hi, this is Dan Rattiner. You checked us in just before? I think you’ve got us in the wrong room. It’s not Lakefront. It’s supposed to be Lakefront.”
“What’s your loom number?”
I looked at Chris. She said, “5925.” I said, “5925.”
“5925 overrooks the rake.”
“I’m looking out at the entranceway to the hotel. There are cars, busses, porters taking out luggage. Beyond it is what looks like a big snow-covered field or parking lot or something.
“That’s the Rake.”
“No, it isn’t. The Lake must be on the other side of the hotel.”
“Well, I would be happy to give you another loom. We have another loom closer to the rake. But it is a smaller loom. Would you like me to move you? We would be happy to do so. We want to be sure you are happy.”
Chris shoved a full color brochure of the view of the lake from the hotel directly under my nose. There, in the brochure, was the lake, with its astonishing green-blue water. She pointed to a domed outcropping halfway up the mountain on the right of the lake in the brochure and then out our window to the same domed outcropping on the mountain on the right.
I tried processing this. It seemed suspicious. “We’ll want to think about whether we should move or not. We’ll talk it over and let you know,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Lattiner,” he said.
I looked again at the brochure and the mountain.
“This is some kind of trick,” I said to Chris.
“You think they have the same mountains on both sides?”
“Where’s the lake?”
“Under the snow. It’s winter, remember?”
I looked again at the awning and the valets and the cars right down on the cobblestones five stories below.
“I still think we are on the wrong side,” I said. “It’s a nice side. In fact, it looks like every magnificent, snow-covered mountain and glacier we’ve seen in the last five days. And that’s a very nice, flat area covered with fresh snow right between some of those mountains and glaciers.”
“So you want to stay here?”
“I still think this is some kind of trick,” I said. Then I looked around at all the luggage and the beautiful bed and sofas and antique tables and chairs. “But I’ll stay.”
And so we have. It’s Lake Louise alright. Six feet of virgin snow on a three-foot-thick covering of ice on 230 feet of lake water. The next day, at sunset, we went around the edge of the lake on a snow-covered path in a horse drawn sleigh.
It’s a look-alike Lake Louise with a look-alike Buckingham Palace. I’m getting used to it.
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